Understanding Russia

By Leo Gura - August 31, 2025

This lady has excellent explanations of Russian society and Russian culture, as a former insider.

The key to understanding Russia is understanding how corrupt and backwards the whole thing is. It is corrupt to the bone. The entire society is one rotten pyramid scheme. Russia is a mafia state where every citizen is a member. It’s hard for people raised in 1st world democracies to imagine this degree of corruption. It defies Western imagination. But, there is an even deeper understanding where you realize that every nation, including America and its empire, and Zionist Israel, are also corrupt pyramid schemes, but the corruption in America and Israel is more sophisticated and elegant.

Every society on Earth is a corrupt pyramid scheme of one kind or another. But in Russia the corruption is of a very crude sort. The corruption in America is like a well-engineered professional machine. The corruption in Russia is like the mob, where they skin your dog alive in front of your children. Even Trump is too refined to imagine this kind of corruption.

Imagine the following form of corruption: You gather a gang of 20 guys with pipes and baseballs bats. You break into the next Microsoft board meeting. You lock the doors and tell Bill Gates and his board members that you are going to break their knee-caps with a baseball right now unless they sign over to you 100 million Microsoft shares. You wait until they give you 100 million shares and you walk out of the building. And if they complain to the police, you give the police chief 10 million shares. If they go to court, you give the judge 20 million shares. If they complain to Putin he tells them that unless they give him 50 million shares he’s going to prosecute them for financial fraud and they will lose the whole company.

That’s how business works in Russia.

Business in America is like playing Animal Crossing.
Business in Russia is like Dark Souls.

Why does Russia so oppose and reject the West? Because Western-style liberal democracy would dissolve this entire system of business. It’s the same reason the Mob opposes running a normal business. The Mob exists to be corrupt. In America corruption is the spice. In Russia corruption is the main course.

Liberal democracy is like redesigning Dark Souls into Animal Crossing. Players great at Dark Souls don’t want that. Putin is like the world’s best Dark Souls player.

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